CHAVELA VARGAS, 'THE ROUGH VOICE OF TENDERNESS'

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home, and she has decided to listen to some music. She has chosen Chavela Vargas, the Costa Rica-born Mexican singer well-known by her rendition of Mexican rancheras, who was born on a day like today in  1919.

Isabel Vargas Lizano (17 April 1919-5 August 2012), better known as Chavela Vargas was a Costa Rica-born Mexican singer.

She was especially known for her rendition of Mexican rancheras, but she is also recognized for her contribution to other genres of popular Latin American music.

She was called la voz áspera de la ternura, the rough voice of tenderness. The Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, presented her with a Latin Grammy in 2007.

She was born in Costa Rica, in San Joaquín de Flores, as Isabel Vargas Lizano, daughter of Francisco Vargas and Herminia Lizano. She was baptized on 15 July 1919 with the forenames María Isabel Anita Carmen de Jesús. She had a difficult childhood: her parents divorced and left her under the care of an uncle, and she contracted poliomyelitis.

She went by Chavela, which is a pet name for Isabel. At age 17, she abandoned her native country due to lack of opportunities for a musical career, seeking refuge in Mexico, where an entertainment industry was burgeoning. There she resided for more than seventy years and obtained Mexican nationality.

For many years she sang on the streets, but in her thirties she became a professional singer. In her youth she dressed as a man, smoked cigars, drank heavily, carried a gun, and was known for her characteristic red jorongo, which she wore in performances until old age.

Vargas was radical in her negation of heteronormativity. Since she preferred to dress like a man, Vargas’ parents hid their defiantly non-feminine daughter from guests.

Vargas sang the canción ranchera in her own peculiar style. The ranchera was sung from a man's perspective and with a mariachi accompaniment. Chavela sang this type of song as a solo, using only guitar and voice. She often slowed down the tempo of melodies to draw more dramatic tension out of songs, so they could be taken as naughtily humorous.

More information: Random Lengths News

Towards the end of the 1950s, she became known within artistic circles, due in part to her performances in Acapulco, a centre of international tourism, where she sang at the Champagne Room of the restaurant La Perla. Her first album, Noche de Bohemia was released in 1961 with the professional support of Jiménez, one of the foremost singer/songwriters of Mexican ranchera music.

She eventually recorded more than 80 albums. Vargas was hugely successful during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the first half of the 1970s, touring in Mexico, the United States, France, and Spain and was close to many prominent artists and intellectuals of the time, including Juan Rulfo, Agustín Lara, Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, Dolores Olmedo and Jiménez.

Vargas was known to have had various lesbian relationships, and is rumoured to have had affairs with Frida Kahlo and Ava Gardner. Although her lyrics were addressed to women, Vargas did not publicly come out until the age of 81 in her 2002 autobiography And If You Want to Know about My Past (Y si quieres saber de mi pasado).

Vargas retired from performing due to a 15-year battle with alcoholism, which she described in her autobiography as my 15 years in hell. Chavela could not maintain her heavy drinking and intense lifestyle.

In 1970, submerged in an alcoholic haze as she described it, she was taken in by a native family who nursed her back to health without knowing who she was. In 2003, she told The New York Times that she had not had a drink in 25 years.

Vargas returned to the stage in 1991, performing at a Bohemian nightclub called El Hábito in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Her career started to recover international prominence, with performances in Latin America, Europe and the United States.

Chavela Vargas had been hospitalized for several weeks as a result of respiratory problems. She died in Cuernavaca, Mexico. According to her official Facebook page, her last words were I leave with Mexico in my heart.

In August 2019, Vargas was one of the honourers inducted in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have made significant contributions in their fields.

More information: The New York Times

 I am a friend of life, at 80 life tells me to behave
like a woman and not like an old woman.

Chavela Vargas